Siberia – The Beauty and The Beast

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Tomtor Village, Oymyakon Valley by Nastya Borisova

Extraordinarily beautiful. Extraordinarily cruel. There is an opportunity for all of us to see bits of both Siberias at Kris Waldherr’s gallery on Marlborough and Newkirk right now: On the Road of Bones. Neighbor and anthropologist Tom Miller has curated a small but striking exhibit of just how spectacular the place is, and gives heartbreaking glimpses of just how cruel it was to the millions of innocent people who died in its labor camps, building the “roads of bones”. There is no understanding of Soviet history or people without understanding this.

Horses in the Mist by Nastya Borisova

We asked Tom what prompted him to chose to do this project, and here is what he said:

We set out with the idea of creating an exhibition for the Kris Waldherr Art and Words Studio Gallery showing the beauty and severity of the circumpolar north, the primary area of my research as an anthropologist. I had previously curated photography and mixed media installations focusing on native peoples and cultures of Siberia and the northwest coast of North America for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and on Siberian shamans for the Linden Museum of Ethnology in Germany. For my next gallery environment I wanted a fresh take on the historic intermingling of Russians and native people during the Soviet and contemporary periods in the far north.

Through social networking media I came into contact with Bolot Bochkarev, a native journalist and blogger from Yakutsk who has a passion for introducing foreigners to the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia. Together with a few friends including Ajar Varlamov, a frequent traveler throughout the Russian north, and Nastya Borisova, a young Sakha woman who works in publishing, Bolot decided to take a road trip in the dead of winter to Oymyakon, the world’s coldest village known as the “Pole of Cold.” Joined by a small crew of fellow travelers, these young Sakha friends followed the treacherous old Kolyma Highway across the forbidding frozen landscape, documenting what they found along the way in photographs and online journals. Kris and I found the images they captured to be extraordinary for their beauty and presence as well as their rarity and the little-known people and places they revealed. Incredibly, all three have only been practicing photography for a few years, yet their pictures are brilliantly composed.

To accompany these images of majestic nature including ice, mountains, trees, and animals, we felt it was vitally important to tell the story of the tragic history of the labor camps  where those who built the Kolyma Highway, an astonishing feat of human engineering, were imprisoned. They were among the millions of victims of Stalinist repression sent to Siberia between the 1930s and the 1950s, the majority of them innocent of any crimes whatsoever. After being arrested, incarcerated, and transported from European Russia and the Ukraine to the northern wilderness, they were enslaved under unimaginably brutal conditions. Inmates were routinely beaten and tortured, starved and frozen, forced to build their own prison cells and dig their own graves. The human cost of building the highway was so deadly that it is known as the Road of Bones, for the bodies of countless workers who died were simply paved over or shoveled into snowbanks on the side of the road where they fell.

Many Russian families, including those who have immigrated to Brooklyn, lost relatives in the camps, but Americans remain largely unaware of the hidden history of Kolyma. We present the story of the GULAG through text panels and quotations from survivors, observers, and historians. Some of their words are placed in shadowboxes with illuminated portraits of postwar native artists from the far northern reaches of Siberia. Their gaze represents those who belong to the land and bear witness to the enduring strength of the northern people and their connection with nature. Shamans, the principal subject of my anthropological research, have maintained a secret but crucial link between the people and the spirits of the land, providing threads of continuity joining the living and the dead. In this exhibition they are seen in montages of photographs from my field work, shown in the taiga setting that is the traditional source of their power.

Today the Kolyma Highway lies in a semi-ruined state, with large sections being reclaimed by the elements. In the past five years, however, adventure travelers and off-road motorcyclists have begun journeying to the Sakha Republic, drawn by the challenge of driving the Road of Bones across the Pole of Cold. By last winter, Bolot was receiving so many inquiries that he decided to make the difficult trip himself. Thanks to his intrepid band of travelers, we are able to show the beauty and terror of Kolyma in New York.

If you’d like to see the exhibit, stop by the gallery – it is open to public on Fridays  5 – 8pm and Saturdays 1 – 5pm. 1501 Newkirk Avenue (entrance on Marlborough Road, around the corner from subway station). 347-406-5811

Open House Reception will be this Friday from 6 to 10 p.m. More info http://ontheroadofbones.com/.

Man with Sled

At the gallery

They read the names

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